


Watch Me Burn, Watch Me Fall

by honey_wheeler, thefairfleming



Category: The White Princess (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2018-11-28 18:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11423889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefairfleming/pseuds/thefairfleming
Summary: A 1970s Brit-Folk Music Scene AU because I am nothing if not consistent in my crackiness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a series in the traditional sense, but something I'll probably dip in and out of as the mood strikes. :)

Lizzie isn’t sure if it’s the way the massive front door sags on its hinges or the sound of her long dress scraping over dead leaves in the foyer, but in any case, the second she walks into the crumbling manor house in the Welsh countryside, she wants to turn right back around and go back to the car.

Except she can’t because Henry is already crowding the doorway behind her, duffel in one hand, guitar case in the other, his rangy form blocking out the purple twilight.

“I am not staying here,” she says on a disbelieving laugh, shaking her head. “This is…not even habitable.”

“It’s not as bad as all that,” Henry replies, pushing his sunglasses on top of his head. His blue eyes are already scanning the massive staircase curving up in front of them and the huge window at the far end of the foyer, the glass grimy and several panes missing.

“Is there even electricity?” Lizzie asks, and Henry moves to the wall, pressing an ancient looking switch.

For just a moment, the chandelier overhead and the sconces on the wall flicker to life. Then there’s a snap, a spark, and a faint burning smell before the lights go out again, and Lizzie turns to stare at Henry with wide eyes.

But he only shrugs. “Should be power in the studio, at least. And it’s summer,” he reminds her, “so we don’t have that many hours of darkness anyway. Look, the sun’s just now setting, and it’s nearly ten.”

He nods towards the open doorway, taking in the lavender sky, the lawn sloping away towards the dirt road his car had rumbled up just moments before. “Jasper said the lighting was dodgy, but there are plenty of candles in every room.”

Snorting, Lizzie folds her arms over her chest. “So what, we’re going to swan around every night with candelabras like characters in a Gothic novel? Think I’ll pass.”

Henry has his back to her, but he tips his head to look at the ceiling, taking a deep breath. When he turns to face her, he’s wearing an expression she’s seen a lot of recently. It’s the face that tells her he’d probably happily throttle her, but he’s attempting to hold onto his patience.

“It’s three weeks, Lizzie,” he reminds her, and she makes another scoffing noise, looking off to the side.

She immediately regrets that because she’s fairly sure she sees something scuttling away in the shadows, and honestly, this is  _mad_.

“I just don’t see why we can’t record the album back in London. Like _normal_ people.”

Now Henry scoffs, letting his bag drop to the foyer, leaves crunching beneath it. “What about this is normal?” he asks, and he has a point there.

Six months ago, Lizzie never could’ve imagined she’d end up in some deserted country home in the wilds of Wales, much less be there with Henry Tudor. They may have both been musicians, but they traveled in completely different circles, Lizzie part of a massively successful girl group with her sisters, Henry an up and comer in the folk scene. If it hadn’t been for that bloody festival…

A lark, really. England’s Darling, pop star Lizzie York in one of her famous mini-dresses and long blond hair performing a stripped down version of her hit, White Roses, with this scruffy near-nobody in threadbare jeans and bare feet.

Sure, it had been fun, and….different. Lizzie had been singing that song since she was sixteen, and she was as sick of it as a person could be, but singing it up there onstage with Henry, it had sounded better to her. Sadder and softer, and his gruff, low voice had blended with her sweet soprano in a way that pulled all the saccharine cheesiness out of the song.

So yes, she’d enjoyed it, and had especially liked the way the crowd had roared at the end. Music festivals were not exactly her usual venue or preferred audience, so it had felt nice, being accepted like that.

What she  _hadn’t_  expected was that people would go completely insane for the song, that bootleg recordings of it would be highly sought and even played on the radio, terrible quality and all.

Or that her own mother would sell her out so thoroughly.

She probably should’ve seen that coming, to be honest. Her last two albums with Bridget and Cecily hadn’t sold all that well, and now, suddenly, here was interest again, a chance to segue from the sugary pop music that was fading from radios and record stores to the folk-rock scene suddenly on the rise.

Henry’s mother- who acted as his manager as well, along with his Uncle Jasper- had also seen the opportunity suddenly in front of them. On his own, Henry was doing okay, playing clubs and the occasional festival, albeit never on the main stage. With Lizzie York, pop princess at his side? The top of the charts suddenly seemed in reach.

The house had been Margaret’s idea, too. Apparently Jasper knew a bloke who rented out his family’s former country pile to bands for brainstorming, writing, and even recording, thanks to a converted shed.

People were already clamoring for a full album from the two of them, Margaret reasoned, and this story- the two of them holed away in a 500 year old mansion in Wales, writing and recording there- would only add to the mystique. “It will give the newspapers an angle, and you’ll be a legend before the album even comes out,” Margaret had said, and Lizzie hadn’t missed the way the other woman’s eyes had been firmly on her son when she said it.

Apparently Lizzie was meant to be a secondary player in this “legend.”

Lizzie’s mother had thought it was a good idea, too, and suddenly the band Lizzie had been a part of all her life was no more, and she was being shuttled off to the country with Henry Tudor in an attempt to save her own flagging career.

And she hadn’t  _hated_  the idea. She’d liked that screaming crowd at Bosworth, after all, liked the idea of another hit single. And, if she’s honest, the idea of making her own music without her sisters was also….not without appeal.

But this house? This _man_?

Not appealing in the least.

She and Henry may sound great singing together, but every conversation they’ve ever had dissolves into arguments within a few minutes, and now she’s about to be trapped with him in the middle of nowhere, in a house that was maybe the height of glamour around the time Shakespeare was all the rage.

Sighing, Lizzie shifts her own bag from one shoulder to the other, and doesn’t miss the way Henry’s eyes follow the movement, briefly dropping to the low neckline of her dress.

 _Dream on, mate_ , she thinks before stalking over to him and holding out her hand.

“Keys,” she demands, and he frowns. HIs shaggy brown hair brushes his collar as he ducks his head down. He’s not that much taller than she is, but he’s always doing this, literally looking down his nose at her, and she loathes it.

“Lizzie,” he starts, but she keeps her palm flat in front of him.

“ _Keys_.”

He holds her gaze for just long enough to make something flutter in her stomach. Lizzie has been steamrolling over men since she grew tits, really, but Henry always seems to stand toe to toe with her, not backing down even when other men would be on their knees.

It’s….irritating.

After a moment, he takes a deep breath, taking his sunglasses off his head and hooking them in his shirt, making the fabric sag slightly, and given how old the shirt looks, Lizzie is surprised the buttons hold. Maybe that’s the reason he only seems to have half of them buttoned, the hair on his chest dark and curling.

Not that she notices.

He keeps watching her, and Lizzie keeps staring back until finally, Henry reaches into the pocket of his army jacket, fishing out his keys and dropping them into her hand.

“Thank you!” she sing-songs, and goes to move past him.

“Drive safe,” he calls after her. “And I look forward to your new song about that boy you like. Or maybe that boy you like? Oh, wait! Maybe you’ll do something truly out of the box like a song about that boy you like!”

When she turns to glare over her shoulder at him, he widens his eyes at her, all mock innocence as he shoves his hands in his pockets and walks backwards into the house. “‘Course you could mix it up, sing about a boy you hope likes you. In any case, luckily ‘boy’ rhymes with ‘joy,’ so plenty to work with.”

Winking, he lifts one hand to make a gun with his fingers, and Lizzie’s own fingers tighten on the keys.

He’s winding her up, but he’s not exactly wrong about the sorts of songs she and her sisters were famous for.

Songs no one wants to listen to anymore.

_Three weeks._

It would only be three weeks in this horrible house with this horrible man.

And after that? Back on top.

Maybe for good this time.

Steeling herself, Lizzie moves from the doorway back into the foyer, and after a moment, walks to the nearby table- covered in a thick layer of dust, of course- and just manages to keep from grimacing as she drops the keys there.

They clatter unnaturally loud in the silent hallway, and when she looks over towards the stairs, Henry is still standing there, watching her.

Daring her, maybe.

So Lizzie lifts her chin and strides over to him. “The songs you sent over to my mum were shit,” she says. “Morose and derivative and boring. No one wants to hear us sing about dead Welsh princes or bogs or whatever else the fuck it is you think folk music should sound like. Even singing about boys I like is better than that. Come up with something new by tomorrow, and we’ll see.”

She’s surprised him, either by deciding to stay or with her frank assessment of his songwriting because for once, he doesn’t have a comeback. He just stands there, eyes slightly narrowed, something like a smile playing around his lips.

Lifting her skirt, Lizzie walks past him and up the stairs. “And we’re calling an electrician,” she calls down.

Henry has clearly had time to recover because as Lizzie reaches the landing, he shouts up, “What if in the new song, the boy you like _is_  a dead Welsh prince?”

She definitely does not give a startled chuckle at that as she snatches up a candelabra from a hall table.

Not at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of what it says on the tin, basically.

The fucking camp stove won’t work.

Muttering under his breath, Henry fiddles with the line attaching the tiny gas cannister again, the percolator rattling on the stovetop as he does. It’s not so much his own need for coffee fueling his irritation- although that’s a part of it- but the knowledge that as soon as Lizzie comes down here and figures out nothing in the kitchen works, he’ll never hear the end of it, and then he’ll have no choice but to throw himself off the roof.

Of course even if he did that, he’d probably just end up back here as a ghost, and she’d stick around for the sole purpose of berating his spirit, so no, the only thing to be done here is to get the sodding stove to work and make some coffee before she wakes up.

He’s got toast at least, lined up neatly in a rack on the scarred and gouged kitchen table. There’s a fireplace in the parlor, so using a long fork, he’d toasted the bread he’d found amongst the provisions Jasper had left for them. There was also milk, eggs, and butter in the tiny and ancient icebox in the studio- the one place electricity reliably flowed-, so they weren’t completely without breakfast, but the coffee issue needed resolving before-

“Have you called someone about the power yet?”

Every curse word he’s ever learned- in English, French, and Welsh, no less- seems to flit through Henry’s head as he glances over his shoulder to take in Lizzie standing by the kitchen table.

She’s wearing a bizarre combination of clothes, probably because of the chill in the house, even in late June. A bright yellow kimono splashed with flowers covers an oversized thermal top that just skims the tops of her thighs, and underneath that, she’s wearing a pair of black tights, feet covered in thick wool socks that creep up her calves. Her dark gold hair is a mess of waves and curls over her shoulders, but her hazel eyes are sharp and alert, belying her sleep-rumpled appearance. 

A piece of toast already in hand, she watches him with raised eyebrows before taking a bite.

Henry wrenches his gaze back to the camp stove. “‘Thank you for making breakfast, Henry,’” he says, his voice pitched slightly higher. “‘How very considerate of you. I have, of course, been lounging in bed for the past three hours, simply assuming someone would prepare food for me because the bluebirds that usually help me in the morning seem to have taken the week off.’”

When he looks back at her, she’s rolling her eyes, brushing crumbs from the front of her kimono. “Forgive me for not fellating you over some toasted bread,” she says, and he looks back to the stove, unseeing, his fingers clenching on the countertop. 

But then she’s right beside him, smelling like soap and warm skin and  _ Lizzie _ , her breast pressed against his arm, her hair dangling onto his hand.

“What’s the problem with this, then?” she asks, completely unaware of the effect she’s having on him. “Other than the fact that no one has used it since the Blitz.”

Lizzie takes another bite of toast, then simply pushes him out of the way with her body, and Henry steps back, shoving his hands in his back pockets as she putters with the stove.

God, he fucking _ hates _ this. 

Not being in this house with her, or the way she seems to just steamroll over anything in her way. Not the cutting looks and the sharp words. Not even the fact that he’s been semi-forced into sharing a career with her.

No, what Henry hates is that he’s never been so attracted to a woman in his life as he is to Lizzie York.

Bloody inconvenient, that, not to mention vaguely distasteful. He wasn’t one of those blokes with posters of her in her candy-pink minidresses affixed to his wall. Some of her songs were good, and yes, she was pretty. Beautiful, maybe. But nothing near his type which had always veered towards the French girls he’d met at university, all dark hair and dark eyes and a certain sultry mysteriousness he’d found intriguing.

Lizzie is frank and forthright, blonde and rosy-cheeked, and the surge of lust he feels every time she’s near him makes no sense. She hates him, after all. And he hates her.

Or wishes he did.

Singing with her at Bosworth Festival, he’d felt...something. Maybe it was just how good they sounded together, the sheer pleasure of knowing the crowd was loving it. That brief, real smile she’d given him as the last note had reverberated through the arena. It was a connection he’d never felt with another musician before, and feeling it with her of all people? 

It had thrown him.

It  _ keeps _ throwing him.

“Ta-daaaaaah!” she trills now, and sure enough, the burner flares to life beneath the percolator. 

Turning back to him, Lizzie lifts her chin, triumph obvious in her expression. “The bluebirds taught me that,” she says, then takes another bite of toast, lips curling in a smirk even as she chews.

He wants to kiss that smirk off her face, wants to back her up against the counter and forget the damn coffee, wants to let his hands skate underneath that stupid top she’s wearing and see if she’s as soft and warm as he thinks she’ll be.

Jesus Christ, he has  _ got _ to get a hold of himself.

“Now will you call someone about the power?” she asks, and Henry nods at the phone on the wall.

“That doesn’t work, either,” he says. “But Jasper will be here on Friday. I’ll talk to him.”

Another extravagant eye-roll, and she’s moving past him, thinking nothing of pressing her forearm against his chest to get him out of the way, and even that touch seems to race through his blood, heating it. If he hadn’t been hard from her saying “fellating,”- and the image that had sent shooting through his brain- he would be now, and to distract himself, he turns back to the stove, suddenly very interested in the percolator. 

“By Friday, we’ll probably both be dead,” Lizzie calls as she swans out of the kitchen, grabbing another piece of toast on her way. 

Gripping the counter again, Henry closes his eyes and sucks in a deep breath. 

She might be right. 


	3. Chapter 3

Lizzie would love to say that it’s professionalism that finally gets them on track, or emotional maturity, or even good, old-fashioned love of the craft, but it’s probably the pot that does it.

He smokes like a pro, which is interesting since he doesn’t even smoke regular cigarettes. Probably thinks they “damage the instrument.” Lizzie, on the other hand, has smoked more than a few fags with the express hope of rasping her voice’s sweet, girlish edges. People didn’t tend to take it seriously when a girl with a voice like candy and sunshine tried to sing about things like heartbreak or anguish or injustice.

When Henry holds his breath on a massive inhale and passes the joint to her between the knuckles of his index and forefingers, Lizzie’s thoughts about fags and voices go right out the window. The only thing in her head is how those fingers might feel on her body.

They’re a real problem, his hands; a true musician’s hands, with callused pads at the tip of each long, nimble finger. Lizzie has found herself more and more distracted by them with every day they’ve been here so far. It’s massively annoying, really. If only he didn’t use them so oddly. It’s hard not to notice his hands when he’s constantly holding things like he was raised by wolves and doesn’t know the proper way. Just that morning she’d watched him brushing his teeth while they argued over something inconsequential, and he was holding the toothbrush like a normal person would hold a pencil. It had made her furious how much she’d wanted him to touch her.

“So,” she says with forced brightness, determined to stop thinking about his hands for five bloody minutes. “What shall we sing next?” It had been her idea, a night of smoking up and singing nothing new, just old songs they love and know by heart. They’ve gotten better at working together since the first day, good enough that Lizzie can feel something fantastic trying to break through, but they’re only here for three weeks and patience has never been her biggest virtue. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was trying to recapture the magic of their performance at Bosworth when she tossed the bag of pot at Henry and told him her plans to loosen them both up, but she can see now that’s where her subconscious was headed. Not surprising, since that night was bloody amazing, feeling astonishingly similar to the night she lost her virginity.

She’s been holding the joint without smoking for several moments, lost in her own thoughts, only realizing when Henry bumps the heel of her hand with his knuckles. He waits for her to hastily take a hit and then plucks the joint from her mouth, his callused fingertips brushing her lips and making something electric zip up her spine. He takes one more drag and then, joint still between the knuckles of his right hand, launches into a series of sugary sweet chords. It’s only when he exhales, closing his eyes against the smoke, and starts to sing that Lizzie realizes it’s one of her own songs.

It’s one of those songs he would probably chalk up to being about a boy she likes, but somehow it doesn’t sound strange coming from him. For a moment, she just listens cautiously, bracing herself for his tone to turn mocking. He only sings with sincerity, and a straightforward candor that Lizzie herself has never been able to do, though she’s wanted to and even tried before. “Audiences don’t want that from you, babe,” producers have told her as they order another take. “They want bright and bubbly, not soul-baring. Take two, and make it peppy.” Henry’s never had to worry about being peppy, she bets. Maybe he hasn’t had quite her success, but he’s had the freedom she lacked, and it makes his voice singing her words sound so _real_.

When he reaches the chorus, he opens his eyes to look at her. Any other man would be taking the piss if he looked right at her and sang her own girlish lyrics about wanting someone to sing for; Henry isn’t. He sings them like he feels them himself. Like he knows her. It’s a bit like being naked in front of a crowd. She feels so acutely _seen_ that it’s hard not to squirm or hide. It isn’t like she’s never heard someone sing one of her songs before – if she had a shilling for every fan who came up to her warbling an off-key rendition of White Roses, she’d be a millionaire by now – but she’s never heard someone do it like this, stripped down until it’s as bare as she feels, sung with Henry’s low, raw-silk voice caressing every word. Somehow he finds the wistfulness in her lyrics, the melancholy longing she’d felt when she wrote it, up late on a hotel balcony while her sisters were asleep in the room behind her. They’d headlined their first show that night, a favor given by the promoter with the tacit understanding that his price was Lizzie suffering his attentions without protest. Her mother had turned a blind eye when he hugged Lizzie too long and stood too close. Lizzie had never felt more alone.

She’d dreamed of a different life when she wrote that song. One where she was a girl getting ready to go to uni instead of a girl getting ready to go on stage, hoping her boyfriend would ask her to go steady rather than hoping for a hit record. One where she could be a regular girl instead of part of the York family legacy. The song had been a smash hit; only Lizzie knew the loneliness behind the optimistic lyrics and delicate imagery. At least until now.

“That’s my song,” she says dumbly when he finishes, the last chord still reverberating in the air. She cringes even as the words leave her mouth. It’s just. That’s _her_ song. That’s _her._

“Is it?” he deadpans. “I thought it was some other ingénue’s.” Lizzie recovers herself enough to kick at his crossed legs with her outstretched foot.

“I would have thought you were above listening to our back catalog.”

Henry shrugs, unconcerned. Apparently he’s not just uncowed by convention but uncowed by rebellion too. It makes her feel strangely shivery and warm, but not as much as she does when he lifts the joint to take another drag, and passes it back to her, not even waiting for her to take it but just holding it against her lips.

“You’ve got some solid stuff,” he says. “Especially the ones you wrote.”

Lizzie inhales too sharply, and coughs on the smoke. Her cheeks flood with heat, half because of the coughing, and half with reluctant pleasure at his praise. Again, she feels acutely seen, but this time in a way that feels more intimate than before, more… Well, more like she felt the first time a boy she had a crush on knew her name. She has an almost irresistible urge to giggle. Either that or fling herself at his face and kiss him until neither of them can think straight. Which is really fucking annoying.

 _God, girl, get a hold of yourself._ Lizzie pulls the joint from his fingers and takes an even deeper hit from it. She has a feeling she might need something strong than pot to get through the next three weeks.


	4. Chapter 4

“So there was something interesting in that article,” Lizzie starts before Henry’s even taken a sip of the beer he just cracked open, part of the fresh supplies Jasper brought earlier. Henry pauses with the beer poised in front of his open mouth. It should be an unremarkable comment from her, but over the last week, Henry’s started to understand her various tones.

“Article?”

“Jasper brought a magazine with him. There was an article about us writing together.” At that, Lizzie fixes him with an arch look. “Your mother’s handiwork, no doubt.”

Henry stops himself from scoffing that her own mother was just as likely a culprit by taking a swig of his beer. “And what was in this article that has you acting like…this?”

It’s a testament to how engaged Lizzie is by the article’s contents that she doesn’t immediately bristle and go on the defensive, demanding to know what he means. Henry’s almost disappointed that she doesn’t. At some point over the last few days, he’d stopped being irritated by how much sparring with her turns him on and started being intrigued.

She frowns slightly, as if whatever she read was so unexpected or unfamiliar that she’s not sure how to process it. “It talked about the contrast between us,” she rolls her eyes, looking more like herself, “you know, the virgin and the pervert.”

“Wait, pervert? It actually said I’m a pervert?”

Lizzie rolls her eyes again. “I read between the lines. Stay with me here. It mentioned rumors of…of the way you’ve recorded your albums. How you…” Lizzie trails off, her face flushing to the shade of a brick wall. For a moment, Henry is astonished. He’s never seen her do anything less than prettily before, including perfect pink blushes at expertly timed moments to support her winsome girl next door image. Then what she’s saying hits him and he laughs out loud.

“The two girls story?” he asks. “Or the one girl where I sent all the techs away story?”

Lizzie’s jaw drops. “You mean they’re true?”

“Mostly.” 

“Oh,” she says in a tiny voice. Normal Henry would smirk at this moment, overjoyed at the opportunity to scandalize the oh so prim and proper Lizzie York, delighted by the chance to nettle her. Problem is, Normal Henry seems to have been left behind in London, and the Henry right now sees that under the shock on Lizzie’s face, there’s fascination, curiosity, maybe even interest, and it makes him feel so impossibly warm towards her, he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop himself from kissing her tonight.

‘Course, from the way her eyes are darting all over him as she nibbles her lower lip, he thinks that she might just not stop him.

“What did you…” she starts, “I mean. You actually recorded a girl while you were having…” Her voice trails off, until she’s only mouthing the word “sex” with no sound. It’s so missish, so out of character, that Henry is unspeakably charmed.

“I recorded her while we were doing a lot of things,” he says, rubbing his chin. God, that had been fun. He’d been wilder then, sex and music roughly equal halves of his life’s ambition rather than the one-quarter-sex-three-quarters-music balance he tries to hit these days. He’d felt like a bloody genius when he figured out how to get the sex _in_ the music. No engineers, no producers, no hovering mother. Just the two of them in a tiny studio, laughing, playing, creating. Suzanne. That was her name. He’s always wondered if she loves to hear that song as much as he does.

Lizzie’s eyes on his are wide, the nude lipstick she’s so fond of almost nibbled away, leaving her lips a soft, smudgy pink. Suddenly instead of seeing Suzanne in his head in that recording studio, it’s Lizzie, and everything goes warm and fluid in him. He imagines kissing that nude lipstick off, recording every sound she makes, one hand working between her thighs as the other works equipment. He imagines sitting between her legs as he records the guitar parts, singing as she watches him from the couch with her skirt rucked up and her chest still flushed. He imagines playing back the record for her, her urgent whimpers looped behind every verse. Suzanne had laughed in delight and pulled him down for a kiss. Henry thinks Lizzie would blush. He thinks she would blush every time she heard the song.

It hits him then that he would never let a soul listen to it if it had been Lizzie on that record. Every breath and moan and cry would have been just for him. In fact, he might have just had to kill any man who ever heard it, which pulls him up short. It’s completely unlike him; he’s never been the possessive type.

He hasn’t even kissed her and already Lizzie is throwing his life into a tailspin.

“Let me know if you want to recreate it,” he drawls, deliberately letting his eyelids drop and looking her over with crude appraisal. It has the intended effect; her whole body lifts into imperious rigidity, like she’s a marionette and someone has pulled her strings. It’s easier when they’re at odds, even though they way they clash will probably end up with him kissing the daylights out of her at some point or another. Steel and flint sparking a fire is something Henry can handle, though. It’s the new, urgent desire to make her soften and melt over him like warm butter that’s dangerous.

“Classy as always, Tudor,” she snaps, swanning out of the room and up the stairs, her backside twitching so fetchingly Henry can only sigh in a mix of appreciation and regret. They better get this album going soon or he may do something truly stupid like ask her to marry him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loosely inspired by Peach by Prince


End file.
